They stopped at the top of the hill and peered down at the tense figures below. Zoe was just now reaching the lake.
“Is that your blurting girl?” said Ripper.
“And her father,” said X.
Once more the thought of taking the man’s soul filled him with dread.
“This calling of ours,” he said. “Did it never bring you shame? What we call ‘bounties’ are human beings, after all.”
Ripper seemed surprised by the question.
“Surely you do not still think of them as human,” she said. “Was I human when I cracked the skull of that serving girl—or when I left her corpse to grow cold in the street? Was I human when I rendered my babies motherless? No, these souls we take have given up all claims on humanity. They are garbage—and we are dustmen.”
twenty
Zoe’s father stared at her as if she couldn’t be real. His fishing pole fell from his hand and clattered against the ice.
Zoe stomped the last few feet to the lake. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. Vibrating, almost. She hated it—it made her seem weak. She wanted her father to feel nothing from her but disgust. She wanted him to know, even before she spoke, that she loathed him, that she saw him for what he was, that he had gotten away with nothing.
But the sight of him stirred up tenderness, too. She hadn’t expected that. Part of her wanted to run to him. He was her father. He used to cut her sandwiches into ridiculous shapes—once he used a cookie cutter to cut a star out of the middle. He used to tell her bedtime stories and insert her into famous moments in history—she’d cured smallpox, begged Decca Records not to reject the Beatles, and refused to board the Titanic when she heard there were only 20 lifeboats. You couldn’t count on him, but when he hugged you, you really felt hugged.
No. He was vile. He was poison. She didn’t have to know what he’d done with Stan when he was young, she didn’t have to know exactly why X was taking him—because she knew what he’d done to her family. He had deserted them. He was the domino that pushed all the others down.
The lake was fringed with dead reeds poking up through the snow. Zoe picked her way through them, still holding her father’s eyes. The thoughts in her head were dizzying: love, hate, forgiveness, revenge.
Her boot struck a rock in the reeds. She stumbled forward.
She landed on her knees on the ice, furious with herself for being so clumsy. When she looked up again, her father had broken out of his daze and was scrambling to help her.
“Zoe!” he called.
The sight of his teary face rushing toward her was too much. It softened her and repulsed her all in the same moment.
“Don’t touch me,” she screamed. “Are you kidding?”
She had never spoken to him like that before—not once in her life.
Her father backed away, palms in the air, indicating that he meant no harm. He seemed startled by the rage radiating from her.
He hung his head.
He can’t even look at me, thought Zoe. The coward.
She got to her feet. She brushed the ice from her clothes.
“How did you find me—and who are they?” her father said, gesturing to the hill behind her.
Zoe was stunned to see X standing with a woman she’d never seen before. She knew from her golden dress—and her coolly ferocious air—that it was Ripper.
“You don’t want to know,” she answered coldly.
Her father picked up his fishing pole.
“Come into the shed. It’s warmer,” he said. “Let’s not do this out here.”
He turned away.
Zoe thought about just walking away right then and there.
Her father must have known what she was thinking.
“Don’t go,” he said over his shoulder. “You came this far to tell me how much you hate me—so come tell me. I deserve it.”
The shed creaked in the wind. It’d been built out of salvaged plywood and two-by-fours—one of the walls still had Post No Bills stenciled onto it in black spray paint—and sat on runners so her father could slide it around the lake. Inside, there was a thermos, a wooden stool, a copy of some ridiculous self-help book, and an electric heater powered by a small, puttering generator. Where the floor should have been, there was a five-by-five-foot patch of cloudy ice with a dark hole in the center, like a bull’s-eye.
Zoe’s cell rang as she entered the shed.
ME!!! it said.
Jonah was trying to FaceTime her now.
She silenced the phone, but a text popped up a minute later: It’s raining so bad! I need someone to talk to! Me and Spock are UNDER THE BED. Wait—now Uhura is, too!
Zoe frowned, and put the phone in her pocket. She just needed a few minutes with her father, then she’d call Jonah back. In a few minutes, everything would be different. X would be here.
“Was that—was that Jonah?” her father asked.
His voice broke the slightest bit.
“Don’t you dare say his name,” Zoe told him.
Her father nodded. He stood in a corner of the shed, hugging his spindly chest with his arms as if to comfort himself. He looked as if he were going to cry. He was so much weaker than she was!
“How did you find me?” he said.
“You don’t get to talk,” she said.
It was unbearable to be so close to him. The air felt toxic. Even the silence was awful, the way it fed on itself and grew bigger and bigger. And yet some part of her—a part she hated, a part she’d crush if she could—wanted to hug him.